The Science Fiction Novel Super Pack No. 1. David LindsayЧитать онлайн книгу.
it remain. It looked all right with the rest of the costume. It felt right, too. Another door folded back noiselessly and a man stood looking at me.
He was young and would have been handsome in an effeminate way if his face had not been so arrogant. Lean, somehow catlike, it was easy to determine that he was akin to Adric, or me, even before the automatic habit of memory fitted name and identity to him. “Evarin,” I said, warily.
He came forward, moving so softly that for an uneasy moment I wondered if he had pads like a cat’s on his feet. He wore deep green from head to foot, similar to the crimson garments that clothed me. His face had a flickering, as if he could at a moment’s notice raise a barrier of invisibility like Gamine’s about himself. He didn’t look as human as I.
“I have seen Gamine,” he said. “She says you are awake, and as sane as you ever were. We of Narabedla are not so strong that we can afford to waste even a broken tool like you.”
Wrath—Adric’s wrath—boiled up in me; but Evarin moved lithely backward. “I am not Gamine,” he warned, “And I will not be served like Gamine has been served. Take care.” “Take care yourself,” I muttered, knowing little else I could have said. Evarin drew back thin lips. “Why? You have been sent out on the Time Ellipse till you are only a shadow of yourself. But all this is beside the point. Karamy says you are to be freed, so the seals are off all the doors, and the Crimson Tower is no longer a prison to you. Come and go as you please. Karamy—” his lips formed a sneer, “If you call that freedom!”
I said slowly “You think I’m not crazy?”
Evarin snorted. “Except where Karamy is concerned, you never were. What is that to me? I have everything I need. The Dreamer gives me good hunting and slaves enough to do my bidding. For the rest, I am the Toymaker. I need little. But you—” his voice leaped with contempt, “you ride time at Karamy’s bidding—and your Dreamer walks—waiting the coming of his power that he may destroy us all one day!”
I stared somberly at Evarin, standing still near the door. The words seemed to wake an almost personal shame in me. The boy watched and his face lost some of his bitterness. He said more quietly “The falcon flown cannot be recalled. I came only to tell you that you are free.” He turned, shrugging his thin shoulders, and walked to the window. “As I say, if you call that freedom.”
I followed him to the window. The clouds were clearing; the two suns shone with a blinding brilliance. By looking far to the left I could see a line of rainbow-tinted towers that rose into the sky, tall and capped with slender spires. I could distinguish five clearly; one, the nearest, seemed made of a jewelled blue; one, clear emerald green; golden, flame-colored, violet. There were more beyond, but the colors were blurred and dim. They made a semicircle about a wooded park; beyond them the familiar skyline of the mountains tugged old memories in my brain. The suns swung high in a sky that held no tint of blue, that was as clear and colorless as ice. Abruptly I turned my back on it all. Evarin murmured “Narabedla. Last of the Rainbow Cities. Adric—how long now?”
I did not answer. “Karamy wants me?” Evarin’s laugh was only a soundless shaking of his thin shoulders. “Karamy can wait. Better for you if she waited forever. Come along with me, or Gamine will be back. You don’t want to see Gamine, do you?” He sounded anxious; I shook my head. Emphatically, I did not want to see that insidious spook again. “No. Why? Should I?”
Evarin looked relieved. “Come along, then. If I know Gamine, you’re pretty well muddled. Amnesiac. I’ll explain. After all—” his voice mocked, “you are my brother!”
He thrust open the door and motioned me through. Instinctively I drew back, gesturing him to lead the way; he laughed soundlessly and went, and I followed, letting it slide shut behind me.
We went down stairs and more stairs. I walked at Evarin’s side, one part of me wondering why I was not more panicky. I was a stranger in a world gone insane, yet I had that outrageous calmness with which men do fantastic things in a dream. I was simply taking one step after another; knowing what to do with that part of me that was Adric. Gamine had spoken of habit patterns, the convolutions of the brain. I had Adric’s body. Only a superficial me, an outer ego, was still a strange, muddled Mike Kenscott. The subconscious Adric was guiding me. I let him ride. I felt it would be wise to be very much Adric around Evarin. We stepped into an elevator shaft which went down, curved around corners with a speed that threw me against the wall, then began, slowly, to rise. I had long since lost all sense of direction. Abruptly the door of the shaft opened and we began to walk along a long, brilliantly illuminated passage. From somewhere we heard singing; a voice somewhere in the range of a trained boy’s voice or a woman’s mature contralto. Gamine’s voice. I could make no sense of the words; but Evarin halted to listen, swearing in a whisper. I thought the faraway voice sang my name and Evarin’s, but I could not tell. “What is it, Evarin?”
He gave a short exclamation, the sense of which was lost on me.
“Come along,” he said irritably, “It is only the spell-singer, singing old Rhys back to sleep. You waked him this time, did you not? I wonder Gamine permitted it. He is very near his last sleep—old Rhys. I think you will send him there soon.” Without giving me a chance to answer—and for that matter, I had no answer ready—he pulled me aside between recessed walls and again the shaft in which we stood began to ride. Eventually we stepped into a room at the top of another tower, a room lavishly, even garishly furnished. Evarin flung himself carelessly on a divan embroidered in silken purple and gestured me to follow his example. “Well, now tell me. Where in Time has Karamy sent you now?”
“Karamy?” I asked tentatively. Evarin’s raucous laugh rang out again. He said with seeming irrelevance, but with an odd air of confiding “My one demand of the Dreamer is—freedom from that witch’s spells. Some day I shall fashion a Toy for her. I am not the Toymaker of Narabedla for nothing. I demand little enough of the Dreamers, Zandru knows! I do not like to pay their price, but Karamy does not care what she pays. So—” he made a spreading movement of his hands, “she has power over everyone, except me. Yes; assuredly I must make her a Toy. She sent you out on the Time Ellipse. I wonder who brought you back?” I shook my head. “I’ve been out of my body too long. I can’t remember much.”
“You remember me,” Evarin said. “I wonder why she left you that? Karamy’s amnesia-rays took the rest of your memory. She never trusted me that far before.”
But I caught the crafty look in his face. I knew only this about Evarin; Karamy was right not to trust him. I said “I only remember your name. Nothing more.”
Because Evarin—I knew—was never ten minutes the same. He would profess friendship and mean friendship; ten minutes later, still in friendship, he would flay the skin from my body and count it only an exquisite joke. I did not like those perverted and subtle eyes. He seemed to read my thought. “Good, we will be strangers. Brothers are too—” he let the word trail off, unfinished. “What have you forgotten?”
Could I trust him with my terrible puzzlement? How much could I, as Adric— and I must be Adric to him—get along without knowing? What was even more to the point, how many questions could I dare ask without betraying my own helplessness? I compromised. “What are the Dreamers?”
That had been the wrong question.
“Zandru. Adric, you have been far indeed! You must have been back before the Cataclysm! Well—our forefathers, after the Cataclysm, ruled this planet and built the Rainbow Cities. That was before the Compact that killed machines. Some people say the Dreamers were born from the dead machines.”
He began to pace the floor restlessly. “They were men—once,” he said, “They are born from men and women. Mendel knows what caused them. But one in every ten million men is such a freak—a Dreamer. Some say they came out of the Cataclysm; some say they are the souls of the dead Machines. They are human—and not human. They were telepaths. They could control everything—things, minds, people. They could throw illusions around things and men—they contested our rules.”
He sat down; his voice became brooding, quiet. “One of